💄 Prison as a Glow-Up?
In today’s edition: 💥 Controversial memecoins on Solana, ⚖️ SOL's tricky tokenomics, 🎮 Arbitrum's gaming program vote, 💰 FTX's $884M sale, and more!
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Union is the first sovereign interoperability layer pioneering trustless bridging between appchains, L1s, and L2s without depending on trusted third parties, oracles, multi-signatures, or MPC. Looking to future-proof blockchain bridging, it is the only protocol that fully addresses the sovereign bridging trilemma, unlocking a horizontally-scaled future.
In this episode, Laura interviews Meg Lister, GM of Grants Labs at Gitcoin, and Kevin Owocki, co-founder of Gitcoin.
They discuss the evolution of Gitcoin from a centralized platform to a decentralized suite of protocols, Gitcoin 2.0, which allows any Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) based ecosystem to fund its public goods. They also talk about the various funding mechanisms available, including quadratic funding, retroactive public goods funding, and conviction voting.
The team is also exploring more futuristic concepts such as private voting systems, angel investing 2.0, and impact attestations. The ultimate goal for Gitcoin is to create a capital allocation infrastructure that funds what matters to communities, whether they are towns, states, countries, or online interest groups.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or watch it on YouTube.
What’s Poppin’?
by Sage Young, Jacob Oliver, Juan Aranovich and Sam Sriram
Is Prison Crypto’s New Glow-Up? Post-Incarceration Do Kwon and SBF Are Admired
Going to jail doesn’t seem to have been such a bad thing for fallen crypto moguls such as Do Kwon, Su Zhu, and Sam Bankman-Fried — at least judging by appearances.
Offensive Memecoins Proliferate on Solana, Sparking Debate
A recent boom in trading volume on Solana has also inspired a troubling uptick in racist, misogynistic, and other derogatory memecoins designed to offend.
Solana Is Ripping. But Are the Economics of the SOL Token Sustainable?
Though memecoins have boosted fees on Solana, the tokenomics call SOL’s economic sustainability into question.
Traders Caught Off Guard as Bitcoin Rebounds to $70,000
A collection of whale and shark wallets acquired 51,959 BTC on a single day, blockchain analysts noted as bitcoin’s price rebounded to $71,000 on Monday.
Arbitrum Community Signals Near-Unanimous Approval for Gaming Catalyst Program
Arbitrum governance members voted overwhelmingly on Friday to expedite gaming on the layer 2 blockchain via “The Gaming Catalyst Program,” proposing a 200 million ARB allocation from Arbitrum’s treasury.
FTX To Sell Two Thirds of Anthropic Stake for $884 Million
The FTX bankruptcy estate has reached a deal to sell two-thirds of its stake in AI startup Anthropic for more than twice the value Sam Bankman-Fried acquired the shares for in 2021.
Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️
💰 The SEC is seeking $2 billion in fines and penalties from Ripple Labs in a long-standing legal battle, with Ripple's response expected next month.
🛑 The U.S. OFAC sanctioned 13 entities and two individuals for aiding Russian sanctions evasion through cryptocurrency services, targeting platforms with transactions linked to sanctioned Russian banks.
🌐 TrueFi announced a lending protocol for tokenized real-world assets, allowing crypto loans with US Treasury bill tokens as collateral.
🛫 A Binance executive escaped custody in Nigeria amid tax evasion charges and regulatory challenges.
🚫 Philippines regulators moved to block local traders’ access to Binance due to licensing issues.
📚 DeFi Education Fund and apparel company Beba sued the SEC, challenging its regulatory stance on crypto and seeking clarity on the BEBA token.
📈 Coinbase International hit a record daily trading volume in March, with the average volume significantly surpassing previous months, peaking at $6.23 billion last Wednesday.
🚀 Fantom Foundation's upcoming Sonic platform aims to process 2,000 transactions per second and serve as a shared sequencer for layer 1 and layer 2 chains, expected to launch in late summer or early fall.
Today in Crypto Adoption...
📈 The London Stock Exchange set May 28 for Bitcoin and Ether ETN market launch, with application acceptance starting April 8. However, the products will only be available to professional investors.
What Do You Meme?
Recommended Reads
Unchained: What Is Hard Pegging in Crypto? A Beginner’s Guide
Memecoins as the new GTM strategy by crypto venture capitalist Li Jin
DL News: Privacy panic erupts in EU on eve of Alexey Pertsev’s Tornado Cash trial
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is up 6% trading at $70,956
ETH is up 5.7% trading at $3,648
BTC dominance: 49.5%
Crypto market cap: $2.82T
*All data as of today, 07:00 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
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